'' THE HOUR BETWEEN DOG AND WOLF '' : MASTER GLOBAL ESSAY

EMOTIONS put us in the right mindstate so that we can effectively think about the situation we're in the middle of. As the neuroscientist Ralph Adolphs told Leonard Mlodinow for his book '' Emotional.''

An emotion is a functional state of the mind that puts your brain in a particular mode of operation that adjusts your goals, directs your attention, and modifies the weights you assign to various factors as you do mental calculations.'' 

In other words, emotions slant the mind in one direction or another depending on circumstances. Indignation helps us focus on injustice. Awe motivates us to feel small in the presence of grandeur and to be good to others.

Euphoria puts us in a risk-taking frame of mind. Happiness makes people more creative, more flexible in their thinking. Disgust primes us to reject immoral behavior. Fear helps amplify our senses and focus attention.

Anxiety puts us in a pessimistic state of mind, less likely to take chances. Sadness improves memory, helps us make more accurate judgments, makes us clear communicators and more attentive to fairness.

As Lisa Feldman Barrett writes in her book '' How Emotions Are Made ,'' ''You might think that in everyday life, the things you see and hear influence what you feel, but it's mostly the other way around : that what you feel alters your sight and hearing ''

The neuroscientist Johan Coates has observed that the body is '' an eminence grise, standing behind the brain, effectively applying the pressure at just the right point, at just the right time, to help us prepare for movement.''

But Coates also knows that sometimes our emotions get things wrong and put us in a self-destructive state of mind. Before he was was a neuroscientist, he was a Wall Street trader at Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank.

In his brilliant 2012 book, '' The Hour Between Dog and Wolf,'' he describes how bull markets could change traders' emotional mind-sets.

'' As a bull market starts to validate investors' beliefs, the profits they make translate into a lot more than greed : they bring on powerful feelings of euphoria and omnipotence. 

It is at that point that traders and investors feel the bonds of terrestrial life slip from their shoulders and they begin to flex their muscles like a newborn superhero. Assessments of risk is replaced by judgments of certainty - they just know what is going to happen :

Extreme sports feels like a child's play, sex becomes a competitive activity. They even walk differently : more erect, more purposeful, their very bearing carrying a hint of danger :

'' Don't mess with me, their bodies seem to say.

Testosterone was flowing. Dopamine came in torrents. This is the kind of mind-set that produces bubbles and the old global financial crises.

Euphoria goeth before the fall.

The World Students Society thanks David Brooks.